China’s online retailers Tencent and JD.com are reportedly in talks to combine their e-commerce business.

The merger involves Tencent taking a six per cent stake in JD.com, reports say.

Tencent’s 272 million active users in its messaging service WeChat can help JD.com boost traffic at its online store.

However, having gained its foothold in e-commerce in 2012 only, Tencent, with six per cent market share in B2C e-commerce sector, just trails Alibaba and JD.com.

JD.com is backed by DST Global owned by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner. The company, last month, has filed an IPO in the US to raise $1.5 billion.